


Dudders Wants To Be A Star

by kcstories



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hd_500, Fluff, HP: EWE, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-War, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-25
Updated: 2008-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 17:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kcstories/pseuds/kcstories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Harry returns to Little Whinging, but even without Uncle Vernon, life at number 4, Pivet Drive, leaves something to be desired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dudders Wants To Be A Star

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: AU-ish, some silliness & some fluff.  
> Challenge: For kowaiyoukai — Keywords: allergies, heavy metal music, ice cubes — Dialogue: "Are you kidding me?" .  
> Disclaimer: The Potterverse is JKR’s, not mine. The line “you’re poison running through my veins” was taken from the Alice Cooper song “Poison”. This story was written for fun, not profit, and no offence is intended towards Alice Cooper or his fans.

Groaning, Harry rolls onto his stomach and pulls his pillow over his head, but he soon discovers that it’s no use. He can still hear the heavy metal music blaring through the house, just as loudly as it did a few moments ago.

Why did he ever expect that coming back would be a good idea?

Granted, life at number 4, Pivet Drive has been a lot more pleasant since the war—or rather, since Aunt Petunia threw Uncle Vernon out on his ear—and the woman is surprisingly kind to Harry these days. 

She’s obviously trying her utmost to compensate for his rotten childhood, and Harry can’t deny that, in some ways, it’s working. He almost feels like he’s part of a  _real_ family again. 

Now if only Dudley hadn’t acquired that questionable new  _interest_  of his…

If Harry thought that the boxing stint had been kind of lame and laughable—and let’s face it, he did—it was still nothing compared to his cousin’s recent ambitions.

All dreams of becoming a professional fighter long forgotten, the young man now has his sights set on rockstardom.

Harry might have been amused by that, too, were it not for the infernal racket every morning, noon  _and_  night, and for the way his aunt keeps shrugging the whole thing off. 

“He’s just trying to find his way, Harry. He’ll be over it soon enough, and move on to something else, something more… respectable and realistic.”

Her tolerant words aside, though, Harry knows she isn’t terribly impressed, either. He knows this with absolute certainty. He has seen the earplugs.

Still, he knows better than to come between a doting mother and her darling Duddikins. That part of the equation hasn’t changed.

Harry sighs deeply. He doesn’t regret leaving the wizarding world behind—not  _really_ —but perhaps he should have given some of the specifics a little more thought. He could have rented—or bought—his own flat, for one thing.

Well, he still can, of course, he’s hardly lacking in funds, but he’d hate to upset his aunt when she’s been making so much effort lately.

He grits his teeth in frustration. It’s bloody typical how everything in his life always has to end up so complicated—even now.

Through the noise, he’s vaguely aware of the doorbell ringing. At least that’s what it sounds like… He nods to himself. Yes, there it goes again.

He throws the pillow aside—it lands somewhere on the floor—and heads downstairs, just in case it’s someone important.

Aunt Petunia has gone to _Boots_ to get some tablets for Dudley’s allergies. Knowing her, she’ll most likely stop by _M &S_ too, and won't be back for ages. 

Dudley, meanwhile, is probably dancing in front of his bedroom mirror, trying to imitate that Alice  _Something-or-other_ , who looks more like an ugly stepsister than the sort of person who’d be let into wonderland, and yes, Harry decides, he really is losing his mind if he’s starting to think in fairytale terms.  _Ruddy hell_.

He opens the door and his eyes widen in shock when he comes face to face with one of the last people he ever expected to find standing on his doorstep. 

"Potter,” comes the standard greeting.

"Malfoy,” Harry replies automatically, and swallows thickly. Seeing his former rival again is nothing short of bizarre. They may have settled into a truce of sorts, they even spent one afternoon together, just the two of them, talking over Butterbeers like they were the best of chums, but that was months ago, and besides, Harry is pretty certain that this is no social call. 

"Aren’t you going to invite me in, then?”

“Er- yeah. Right. Sure. Sorry,” Harry mumbles. “Come in.”

He leads his visitor to the kitchen. “Would you like a drink?”

Malfoy nods. “Just a glass of water, please. I don't trust those fizzy, funny-coloured Muggle beverages.”

Harry smiles. He opens the fridge, pours some water into a glass and asks, “Do you want some ice cubes?”

"Ice cubes?” Draco repeats. He sounds confused. “Whatever happened to casting a simple cooling charm? You haven’t gone all… Muggle now, have you?”

Harry shrugs. “I don't want to be detected, in case anyone were to come looking for me; that horrible Skeeter woman, for instance.”

Draco rolls his eyes—a little too demonstratively to Harry's liking. "Your location is hardly a secret. It was painfully obvious where you’d go, especially with the Walrus out of the way."

Harry blinks. “You mean: you heard that argument they had?” 

Draco smirks. “I wouldn’t be surprised if half of London did. Your uncle has a good pair of lungs on him, I’ll give him that much. So, I take it that things around here are more agreeable these days? Less shouting?”

Harry nods slowly. During that afternoon he spent with Draco, he mentioned Uncle Vernon’s nasty attitude. He talked about a lot of other things he generally kept to himself, too. Clearly, Draco was listening that day, and paying attention.

“Yeah,” Harry says, “and as for…” He vaguely gestures around the room. “I didn’t think anyone would think I’d come here because, well, it was the most logical place, wasn’t it?”

Draco shakes his head. “That line of reasoning only works, Potter, if strategy is something people actually consider you capable of.” 

Frowning, Harry hands him the glass of water, almost dropping it as the sound of another guitar riff shakes the house—literally.

 _”You’re poison running through my veins.”_

Draco’s eyes widen. “What in Salazar’s name?” He pulls out his wand, mutters an incantation and instantly, the music fades into nothingness. 

"That's better. I could barely hear myself think. Now, down to business."

Both sit at the kitchen table, and Draco wastes no time in getting to the point. "The Ministry needs your help."

Harry’s jaw drops. “What? Are you kidding me?" 

Draco takes a sip from his glass. "No." 

"But why?" Harry asks, and wonders why he even wants to know, why he even  _cares_. Surely he isn’t planning to go back there and be the Ministry’s puppet all over again? No. Certainly not.

"With you out of the picture,” Draco says, "it would seem that certain… less than desirable elements have been undertaking some rather… disturbing experiments.”

Harry shouldn’t be curious, he realises this full well, but there’s no going against one’s Gryffindor nature. “Oh?”

“Some insane cult in the Cotswolds—of all places—is trying to bring back... well,  _Him_."

"You don’t mean Voldemort, do you?"

Draco sighs. "No, I was thinking of Beedle the Bard, actually. To whom do you suppose I’m referring, Potter?"

Harry takes a deep breath. “Right. Sorry.”

"And that’s only one aspect of the spreading madness. People keep wondering where their hero has disappeared to; those who don’t know about the Flamingo and the Walrus, that is. Some even whisper that you’ve been kidnapped or killed and that the Ministry is keeping that little fact under wraps to preserve morale or some such nonsense.”

Harry can do nothing but stare.

“The long and short of it, Potter,” Draco continues, “is that your decision to leave was not without consequences, and bad ones, at that, for the most part.”

“Right,” Harry mutters as he tries desperately to let it all sink in. It’s not a pleasant discovery that he still possesses so much influence, so much power, and he’d rather not have people depend on him like this. Wasn’t that supposed to have ended along with the war?

“So, the Ministry was wondering if you wouldn’t mind putting in an appearance. Give a few interviews, for instance. You did, more or less, leave those reporters hanging too, didn’t you?” 

Draco gives a meaningful look and Harry almost flinches at the memory of his last encounter with the press.

In hindsight, ‘because I'm bloody  _gay_ ’ wasn’t the most intelligent thing to blurt out on that occasion, but the Skeeter woman was badgering him relentlessly about whether he’d met the girl of his dreams yet and what had ever happened to his budding romance with Ginny Weasley, and in his defence, Harry was having a pretty crappy day to begin with.

Come to think of it, today doesn’t rank in the top five either. 

“Well, what else was I supposed to have done?” he snaps, as though Draco is somehow to blame. “I had to leave, didn’t I?”

Draco shrugs. “Not necessarily.”

“No.” Harry snorts. “You’re right, I could have stayed on and let them persecute me all over again. I can see the headline now: The Boy Who Lived To Be Buggered.”

Draco chuckles. “I don’t think so.”

Harry frowns.

“Did you know, Potter, that Dumbledore was gay?”

Harry blinks. “What? Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?”

“No,” Draco says simply. “Just ask Granger if you don’t believe me. She probably read it somewhere over the course of the years. And incidentally, a little birdie once told me that your late godfather had a thing with Lupin when they were at school.” 

Harry blinks again. 

“And er..." Draco clears his throat. He looks uncharacteristically nervous, all of a sudden. “You don’t suppose I’m actually straight, do you, Potter?”

Harry’s eyes couldn’t possibly grow any wider than they are now. His throat goes dry as he looks at the young man sitting across the table—really  _looks_  at him.

Truthfully, Harry has never given Draco’s preferences much thought. Or rather, he never assumed the boy to be anything but straight, with him being a pureblood and all. Not to mention how Parkinson was always hanging around him at school.

“But what about Pansy?” Harry asks.

Draco smiles. “Ah. The bratty sister I never had. She was a brilliant ally when it came to keeping Father off my back. He expected me to marry and produce an heir, you know. As long as Pansy and myself pretended to be dating, he didn’t try to set me up with anyone else.”

“Oh. Does he still…?“

Draco shakes his head. “Fortunately not. Even today, the Ministry continues to watch his every move. Suffice it to say, he’s got bigger problems. Besides, he told me a few months ago that he’d settle for an adopted heir, just so long as there actually is one.”

Harry runs a hand through his hair and sighs. In theory, leaving the wizarding world and all its demands behind seemed like the ideal solution, but in practice…

Certainly, life at the Dursleys’ has greatly improved and Petunia and Dudley are his last remaining family, but still…

Harry doesn’t belong here. He never did. It's not the sort of life his parents wanted for him either.

Besides, if Draco is really… then maybe… Maybe those feelings Harry developed during the war weren’t so foolish and pointless, after all. Maybe there’s just a hint of a chance that… Harry swallows hard.

“So, Potter?” Draco breaks the odd silence. “Would you consider coming back with me to appease and reassure the masses? It would only involve showing your face a few times. No one expects you to vanquish a Dark Lord or anything, not this time.”

For a long moment, Harry considers his options. “All right,” he finally says. “I’ll come with you, on one condition…”

“Name it,” Draco says without argument. 

 _People in high places must be desperate,_ Harry thinks.  _Good._

“It’s er… kind of personal, Draco.”

“Oh?” Wide eyes gaze at Harry from across the table.

“Would you… have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

Draco blinks, then laughs. 

Harry mistakes the goodhearted amusement for mockery, but before he can lose his temper, the laughter turns into a genuine smile—the likes of which he has rarely seen on Draco’s face.

“You want to have dinner with me?”

Harry bites his bottom lip and nods. “If you want to. And it’s not an actual condition, not really. I just thought… Well.”

“Consider it a date,” Draco says, still smiling. 

Harry grins, and can’t help blushing, just a little.

“Now, shall we get back?”

Harry hesitates briefly as he looks around the room. Dudley is probably still stomping around upstairs, yelling along to music only he can hear, and Petunia…

 _Never mind._  Harry will Owl the two of them later, and mention some wizarding emergency. They’ll understand, and he can always come back to visit later. 

He rises from his chair, takes Draco’s arm and with a soft ‘pop’, they disappear out of sight. 

Upstairs, Dudley presses ‘play’ again.

  
  
  



End file.
